The classification of the various groups of society, or the division
of human society into classes, is as logical a process, that is, a
result attained by the operations of reason, as the division of
animals, plants, and minerals into various classes. A specific group
of social beings, which bear the stamp of common characteristics, is
put in a certain class by social science. This classification cannot
be made by purely empirical methods of immediate sensuous perceptions.
It cannot be determined from the appearance of modern men, whether
they are capitalists or workers. We must look for certain
scientifically established features which determine the social
classification of men. As we have just seen, Marx held economic facts
to be fundamental, and he contended that the economic characteristics
were valid for purposes of classification. In his view, the manner in
which a specific human group obtained its sustenance was the chief
characteristic. Men whose chief means of life are wages form the
working class. Men whose most important source of livelihood is the
ownership of capital (land, buildings, workshops, and raw material)
form the capitalist class. It is of little moment that a worker owns a
savings-bankbook, and draws interest or dividends from a co-operative
society, or that a capitalist personally supervises his undertaking,
or organises his business, so that his profits partly consist in wages
of superintendence or salary. The outstanding feature is that the
chief interest of the worker is concentrated on wages, whilst that of
the capitalist is directed on property. It goes without saying that
the social classes are not completely homogeneous. Like botanical and
zoological classes, they may be divided into kinds and species; the
working classes include well-paid hand and brain workers, as well as
sweated sections; but all the subdivisions of the social classes
possess the common outstanding quality of the same source of
livelihood, which is either personal labour or the possession of
capital. One class disposes only of labour-power, while the other
class owns the means of production.
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